Star Trek: Vengeance
by Art Vandelay
Summary: We all know Babylon 5 was a cheap rip-off pretending to be the intellectual underdog. And the behavior of their fans towards Trek betrays their insecurities about their show. It's time to sink to their level.


Star Trek: Vengeance  
  
Captain Benjamin Sisko surveyed with pride the fleet of starships that hung in the blackness surrounding the station. His fleet. Well, a group of four ships was more accurately designated a flotilla, and they would not be known as his biggest command. In recent months he had led an armada of literally hundreds of both Federation and Klingon vessels in an epic offensive to retake both Terok Nor and Bajor, and rename the former as Deep Space Nine. But that was business; this was pleasure.   
The dark silent hulls that shimmered in the light of the Bajoran star fuelled his confidence that, in less then a week, the leech sucking on the lifeblood of the Federation would be removed. The Yeager, Asgard and Defiant were by no means large by starship standards, but each had their own merits. The Yeager was agile and state-of-the-art, the Asgard was ageing but still potent, and of course the Defiant was the most overpowered, unstable, perversion of technology which had ever been let loose from a Federation shipyard. He had hoped for a Galaxy Class ship as well, but since there were only a precious few of those mighty vessels in the fleet, and also the trivial fact there was a war on, none could be spared. Instead the heavy cruiser Excalibur, under the respected Captain Machenzie Calhoun, was to be the behemoth that would carry the large number of ground troops that he needed for this mission.   
Throughout history, many great men have debated over if there could be such a thing as a just war. Sisko knew the answer. And with truth, justice and the patent office by his side, the answer was yes.  
  
Captain John Sheridan surveyed with pride his new hairstyle. However, all was clearly not well so he reached for the comb. His goatee was coming along nicely too. In fact soon it would be just like that of Sis... No, the ideas were his, all his. After a quick adjustment to the collar of his ornate uniform, he exited his quarters and headed for the main concourse of the station. Once there he would stroll through the crowds of his followers, messiah-like, accompanied by sycophantic orchestrations. Ovine in their dedication, they would believe his tales of how he defended the station from wave after wave of increasingly malevolent species. And how these achievements were all his, not a cheap, contrived, scum-sucking, piece of pulp trash that could be legally classified as theft, but his and his alone.  
  
Sisko's journey from his quarters to where the Defiant was docked was taking longer then expected. Everyone was coming to him with their problems on his day off from being stationmaster of DS9. At each junction along the dark corridor was another nuisance.  
"Yes Odo? Quark is offering a free phaser pistol with every three drinks purchased? Well then you'd better arrest him before he sells the security logs as Borg poetry like he did the last time."  
"Hello Major. Bajor's on fire? Then remove all the oxygen from the atmosphere, that'll solve everybody's problems."  
"No I don't want to buy any of your bibles. Hasn't Jehovah returned yet? Maybe you guys should call it a day."  
Finally he crossed the threshold onto the warship.  
"Sisko to O'Brien. Disengage all moorings and get us away from here."  
O'Brien's usual brogue acknowledged his request over the communicator and behind him the hatch slid shut. Sisko grabbed hold of a railing so that the inertia of the thrusters firing wouldn't unbalance him. Nothing was going to ruin his holiday.  
  
Sheridan was troubled. Recent demographics showed a dramatic fall in the appeal of the all-American flawless hero to mindless pre-adolescents. He briefly considered a leather bodice like Xena's, but instead went back to thinking up 'new' dialogue.   
  
"Captain on the bridge."  
The bridge crew looked up from their duty stations when the ensign announced their captain's presence. Worf was at the starboard tactical station, Dax was at the helm, Bashir was at communications, and O'Brien was alternating between engineering and the second tactical console.   
The Cardassian spy turned tailor Garek was also on the bridge. Technically, this wasn't his fight, but the talents of one of the late Obsidian Order's finest would come in very handy, among them a unique persuasive nature. You see, while most government agencies throughout the galaxy employed the usual techniques during interrogations: Making offers, threats, good cop/bad cop. The Obsidian Order preferred less conventional methods, like measuring the length of your small intestine against a height chart while reading Ulysses to you in binary. However all this was merely the darker side of his personality. Garek was, in person, a charming resourceful type with only a knack for making you feel uncomfortable suggesting a sinister history. The astounding depth and variety of character on Deep Space Nine was one of the reasons why Sisko had warmed to the place and had not yet left it to rot in favour of a potentially less terminal career.  
"The other ships are ready sir," said Dax.  
"Good," said Sisko as he sat down. "Lay in a course for that sector with the lowest property values in the alpha quadrant, and proceed at warp eight."  
"Aye sir."  
"Doctor, patch me through to all ships."  
Bashir keyed in the appropriate command.  
"Channel open."  
"This is Captain Sisko. I understand that most ships are running on skeleton crews. Not that this is a high risk mission or anything, but that it is seen as a waste of time and resources. Now hear this. What they have done is unacceptable. They have undermined, discredited, and plagiarised us, and those who fought before us. Let's kick the ass of those who cheaply go where we have gone before."   
Accompanied by those words the four starships jumped into warp, away from the problems of Bajor and the wormhole and Dominion invasions and all that madness, and towards vengeance. The journey would take about four days.  
  
Over those four days Sheridan and his crew fought a war they were so obviously going to win in the end, travelled to an alternate universe, time warped back to the nineteen-nineties, got cloned and shouted a lot. All this was done rather routinely and without any style or charm.  
  
Only minutes away from their destination, the Yeager, Excalibur, Asgard and Defiant ploughed through hyperspace with the same indifference that they had set out with. Sisko concluded his latest log entry - a convention that was increasingly deteriorating into inconsistent rantings on the crimes of Pepsi, Microsoft and the Japanese electronics industry - and looked up at the stars streaking past on the viewscreen.   
"Captain." said Bashir, "I've found something relevant here."  
Bashir was consulting a sort of electronic book. It was a wholly remarkable book. In fact, it is probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. He had been ordered to find any information available on the enemy, but the Defiant's computer had nothing on them. As a result Bashir was forced to use other sources.  
"Let me just put it up on the viewscreen," added Bashir.  
Lines of text superimposed over the image of streaking stars.   
  
Banisters:  
Banisters are in widespread use throughout the galaxy and are recognized by many spacefaring races as an indication of a well advanced and responsible culture. Banisters have many and varied uses, (a) keeping the user of the staircase from falling off the side, (b) maintaining posture, (c) sliding down when rapid transit and/or childlike exuberance is required. At least must banister must be present by law at a Minbarda wedding.  
  
Sisko smiled at the totally irrelevant extract. Total irreverence and a detached style of narrative were characteristics of only one book. Despite that, it was still maintained as the best, and conveniently affordable, reference book available. True, it had several omissions, and some of the information was apocryphal, if not widely inaccurate. He once owned a copy of that same book but regrettingly lent it to Captain Janeway of the Voyager four years ago.  
"Sorry sir," Bashir apologized, "Wrong page. Just a second."  
  
Babylon Five:   
So it's come to this. To be seeking information on such a place either means you're a gullible and impossibly sad tosser, or have had the cruel misfortune to somehow wind up there, the biggest known hitchhiking risk. But since this is the definitive and fully compressive guide to life in our inanely bizarre galaxy, we are obliged to give you a basic overview.   
Babylon Five is a five miles long, half mile in diameter, space station. It has a population of 500,000 complete and utter assholes, believed to be the highest ratio of assholes to square feet since the ill-fated village of North Belgooly. (see EARTH, HOMO SAPIANS, B.L.F., and PITCHFORKS) They are incapable of making their own decisions, instead they imitate the actions of others, promptly claim themselves superior, and purchase large quantities of hair products. Avoid if you dislike plagiarism, materialism, 'ism's in general, and cheeseiness. Avoid is the keyword here.   
  
"Thanks Doctor," said Sisko, "Unfortunately we already knew all that and clearly the Guide's editor obviously thought further information was a waste of time." he issued a few terse orders before asking, "Status report."   
O'Brien did not answer immediately as he was still sulking about Sisko accusing him earlier of being too like Scotty, something the engineer was highly offended at. After all, Scotty was merely a comic book stereotype while O'Brien, though sharing a Celtic origin, had much more going for him then a bunch of immortal catchphrases.   
"Phasers are, as always on this thing, fully charged. The engines are humming away happily to themselves and the shields, life support and sensors are well able for it. Also the cloaking device must be working splendidly since we can't find the damn thing."  
"What was that last one?"  
"Ah you see, when we were testing it out yesterday it got disconnected from the exterior deflectors and we can't remember where the actual magic box itself is."  
"Not to worry," shrugged Sisko, who was beginning to lighten up a bit, "We want them to see us coming. Besides, the other three ships would be fully detectable anyway."  
"Captain," interrupted Dax, "Were approaching a solar system. Recommend that we drop to impulse and go to red alert."  
"Go right ahead." concurred Sisko.  
As the four ships shed their warp fields and dropped back into normal space, the interior lighting darkened and was bathed in a pulsing crimson glow. In less then five minutes every system was now on-line, warmed up and backed up. And every crewmember was ready for battle.  
"Commanders Yeager, Asgard and Excalibur," ordered the Captain, "Assume attack formation 'Sisko Delta'."  
Worf was secretly adjusting the phasers so they would give third degree burns to anyone within eight hundred meters of where the blast would hit, but only if layers of hull armour protected them, otherwise they would just vaporise along with anything else that would be exposed to 8.5 gigawatts of raw phaser energy. Worf took an intense pride in his work, and insisted in being as thorough as inhumanely possible when it came to Captain Sisko's revenge. Worf hated dishonour, hippies and tribbles. Until Captain Sisko had briefed them on the reason they had come here, the Klingon never thought he could hate anyone as much. The computer bleeped for his attention.  
"Sir, sensors have detected an artificial object, five miles in length." said Worf, realising their journey was at an end,   
"Permission to fire all weapons?"  
Sisko still couldn't safely tell the difference between one of Worf's jokes and one of Worf's genocidal episodes.  
"Is fruitless violence the only answer for you Commander?"   
"It's a living, sir."  
"Well if you could wait a few minutes I may be able to rustle up a bit of shameless grovelling to tide you over until it's phaser time." Sisko then looked forward. "On screen."  
When the starscape on the viewscreen was instantly replaced by that of the space station Babylon Five, Sisko's face slightly betrayed his reaction of total abhorrence. The picture seemed to be out of focus.  
"Enhance the image Chief."  
"I can't sir. That's what it actually looks like. Christ, what a dive." said O'Brien.  
"It looks like a shoddy computer image of a toothpaste tube." sneered Bashir.  
"I know Deep Space Nine could barely hold itself together when the Cardassians abandoned it," continued O'Brien, "But this place is the pits. I'm seriously worried about the architect's health."  
"I think it was built on a dare."  
  
Sheridan was having a discussion about his pectorals with his personal trainer when the back of his hand had a startling message for him. The back of his hand was in no way acting of character as his communicator was on the back of his hand. Which he thought was an original enough place to have a communicator.  
"This better be a class one emergency." he said  
"Yes sir, it is. One of our remote sensor outposts has detected four Federation starships, and their weapons are running hot."  
"Okay, blow them up. Sheridan out."  
"Not that easy sir. Their technology is far superior to our own. Gawd damn it sir, we must try to talk them down." shouted the voice in a manner that rivalled Sheridan's own cheesiness.  
"There's only one way to find out."   
There was in fact several ways to find out but Sheridan tended to stick with the same few sentences that he memorised at that weekend training course.  
Then every audio speaker in that five-mile long metal tube began to talk in a low brusque, including the one on Sheridan's hand.  
"This is Captain Benjamin Sisko of the warship Defiant, representing the United Federation of Planets." He paused for effect, "All rights reserved."  
Sheridan knew this day would come. In the same way you can only use the same teabag for a limited time, you can't expect to get away with completely ripping off something without them fighting back. He went to the nearest computer console - a sad looking dated affair with the old flashing diodes and Windows PaintBrush graphics - and prepared to respond to the hail.  
"This is Captain John Sheridan, commanding Babylon Five. Couldn't you have brought this through the appropriate legal channels?"  
"We did. When the lawyers found out what you did, they handed in their commissions from the Judge Advocate General and are now the torpedo room technicians here on the Defiant."  
"I see."  
Ben Sisko would not be remembered as a man for random crochet tournaments, embroidery, or a love of small talk.  
"You will lower your shields and surrender your vessels."  
"Not so fast. I wish to meet to discuss terms."  
"Discussion is irrelevant. There are no terms. We will board your station, and if you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you."  
Sheridan thought about this for a moment. There were two things that his life insurance didn't cover, voluntary sex with a Klingon, and Star Fleet's inevitable vengeance. However he did not wish to return to Earth to his old job of lip-sync supervisor for the Kinder egg ads.  
"We've never lost before. Go to hell, you son of a bitch."  
  
Dax turned around to face the others when the comm-link was severed. "That was a little uncalled for."  
Sisko was not offended much by such cliché oriented insults. The initial crime of plagiarism that had burnt into his very soul ensured that his next words would have been exactly the same regardless of Sheridan's feeble effort.  
"Sisko to all ships, open fire."  
The Defiant, followed in close formation by the other three starships, shot forward, outpaced only by the phaser and torpedo salvos that they were firing inimically towards the station. Babylon Five's shields crackled and spat with ailing energy under the just punishment. Then the starships broke from a discernible formation and circled the cylindrical abomination gracefully, raking it with eye-dazzling streams of golden light.  
"Congratulations Captain," smiled Garek, "I believe their shields are failing."  
The shields gave one final blaze of green before fading out of existence.  
"Cease fire. Most of the stations's population is civilian, albeit the scum of the universe. Hail that bimbo excuse for a captain." ordered Sisko.  
"The bimbo is not responding." replied Dax.  
"Captain," said Worf when he reluctantly took his gaze off the crosshair display, "Something is happening."  
Dozens of starfighters swarmed forth from every orifice along the five mile station. They gathered into one furious cloud and then divided into four separate groups which surrounded a starship each.  
"Oh for the love of God," said Dax with annoyance, "Those things are so like X-Wings it's laughable."  
Worf and O'Brien were also getting annoyed because of all the extra targets on their displays. The fire-red laser beams, though harmlessly washing off the shields, were bothering the sensors.  
"You can't expect us to shoot all those fighters down sir." Bashir said on behalf of reason, "It would be a slaughter."  
"You're right Doctor," said Sisko, "Tell the Yeager, Asgard and Excalibur to set their phasers to..." he consulted his tactical readout, "...one twelfth power to disable the X-wings. Only one shot per fighter."   
White phaser streams darted out from all sides of the four starships in short bursts of frightingly quick succession. It was a joy to watch the stationary ships sedate the clouds of fighters in less then a minute. Sisko's plan was not infallible however, not every fighter was merely crippled. Some fighters were still functional, requiring a second shot to stop them. Some lost life support or flew out of control into the side of the station. And a few others simply blew apart beneath a single blast. The bodycount was still far less then it would have been following a full powered duck shoot. Sisko rose from his chair.  
"Sisko to Excalibur, Prepare to launch the shuttlecrafts." They had ruled out transporter beams in case the station had pattern scramblers. He took one more look at the tactical readouts before turning to walk off the bridge.   
"Commanders Worf and Dax, and Mister Garek, You're with me. Mister O'Brien, you have the conn."  
It was not common practice to give command of a starship to a non-commissioned officer but the Master Chief of Operations - enlisted crewmembers often received elaborate titles to keep them from stabbing the officers - had more tactical experience then anyone else and was the only genuine space cowboy left in Star Fleet.   
O'Brien waited for the vacant chairs to be filled with replacements before giving any orders.  
The station on the viewscreen was totally vulnerable to attack but the two-hundred-thousand population would have to be forcibly evicted before they destroyed it. After a five minute wait, Sisko's voice drifted over the bridge.  
"Shuttlepod ready. Lower the shields and open the bay doors."  
The circular hatch on the underneath of the Defiant pulled apart and the shuttlepod dropped out. Its impulse engines flared, propelling the tiny craft towards the station. Four kilometres to their right, larger shuttlecrafts filled with marines were gliding out of the Excalibur's hanger decks. Dax and the other pilots would have to carefully navigate the scores of crippled fighters drifting powerless around the starships.  
Suddenly all the crippled fighters drifting powerless around the starships exploded in perfect unison, enveloping the whole scene in yellow fire. The shuttles were pounded and tossed about as shards of white hot metal smashed against their shields. The shields of the Yeager and Asgard hardly flinched under the explosion, but the naked hulls of the Defiant and Excalibur began to splinter and crack, bleeding vital atmosphere and debris in their wake.   
Babylon Five itself did not emerge unscathed. A half mile length of the station had been stripped completely of hull plates and decks, leaving only a blackened framework.  
  
"The self destruct prefix codes we transmitted must have worked." confirmed Sheridan's first officer, "But I have no idea of the results. We're totally blind all along section six."  
By this stage Sheridan was in the control centre of the station and was trying as many sneaky tricks as his self-obsessed mind could put together before the boarding parties arrived. The fighter pilots knew the risks when they had signed on, (probably after being rejected from Star Fleet) and there would be some questions asked at the next Section Six Residents' Association AGM. But the surviving civilian population could be easily paid off. This was Babylon Five after all.  
  
Worf was doing his best not to look at the spiralling starscape on the other side of the glass as Dax fought to regain control of the claustrophobic shuttlepod. Klingons were just not meant to be exposed to outer space nonsense such as the weightlessness, disorientation and extreme G-forces that the pod was currently going through. It was embarrassing enough to have to sit on Garek's lap due to the lack of seats inside the cramped cabin, - there was plenty of space on the other side of the glass - but green was not a flattering colour for Worf, Son of Mogh.   
"Could you move that stupid knife of yours Worf?" complained Garek. The tossing and spinning of the shuttle was worrying enough without Worf's short curved blade waving about in his face.  
"My mek'leth is no concern of yours" growled Worf back at him.  
"I don't get quite the same joy out of facial laceration as you."  
"Quiet." shouted Sisko back to them.  
The surface of the station was getting noticeably closer.  
"All right," shouted Dax, reaching for the 'engage' button, "This might sting a bit in the morning."  
The shuttle seemed to stretch as the crystal blue sections of the pod's stubby nacelles flashed for an instant. The stabilisers, inertial dampeners and every other component screamed in protest under the strain but when the instant was finished the shuttle was longer moving.  
"There's no inertia in a warp field," explained Dax. "As it technically doesn't exist in Einsteinean space."  
"Very good Commander. I'm scanning for a way in."  
You see, the shuttlecrafts from the Excalibur were all equipped with roof mounted docking rings that could easily melt their way through the cheap hull materials of Babylon Five, allowing the boarding parties to climb into the station. The Defiant's pod had nothing like that so they would need to find a hanger bay or large enough airlock.  
  
Miles O'Brien didn't need his command console to tell him that the ship was in an awful state, but it would be nice if it could. The device in question was crushed beneath a section of the ceiling.  
What little of the bridge that could be seen through all the smoke and darkness was in ruins. The only illumination was from electrical fires, the remaining computer terminals and the static filled viewscreen. As the damage was too severe to be caused by conventional self destruct systems, he deduced that the fighters must have been carrying some sort of nuclear fusion or anti-matter explosives.   
O'Brien pulled himself up from the corner that he had been catapulted to, and probed the choking grey cloud for something that could give him a status report. Junior Lieutenant Burke was still sitting at the helm, but neither were much use as the shattered flight controls were sticking out of Burke's scorched face and neck.  
He could hear Bashir's anglo-eejit voice at the back of the bridge. The doctor was probably tending to another downed crewman. There were thirty-four crewmembers on the Defiant when the fighters self destructed, hopefully most would have fared better then Burke. Following some moaning, a shape lifted itself up from the floor in front of him.  
"Should we return fire Chief?"  
"No." He recognised Ensign Hotaru's clipped tones, "Get that viewscreen back on-line." He tapped his comm-badge, "O'Brien to engineering."  
Crackling sounds of the fires and explosions that were currently gracing the home of the temperamental warp core added to the similar ambience of the bridge.   
"The core is stable chief," said an absurdly calm voice. "That doesn't mean we can use it for a while."  
O'Brien just wasn't in that special mood for a supernova intense explosion right now.  
"I've got the shields up," called another engineer over the channel, "Er, point six percent. Never mind."  
"External sensors are giving a video feed." said Hotaru.  
The static began to fade into the detestable form of Babylon Five and the surrounding area.   
Everyone was thrown to the left hand side of the bridge as a new barrage of weaponry struck the Defiant. The horrifying metallic screeching of a ship tearing itself apart resounded throughout the defenseless hulk. Sparks danced across the console O'Brien was struggling with to summon the shields into existence.  
He glanced up to watch as the next pair of purple fireballs, that would bring his death, was flung from the previously silent turret. But the Chief was to be denied that last privilege. The purple flashes were suddenly obscured by an enormous gray object that filled the viewscreen. A sweeping curve met another, which then led to a muscular looking nacelle.  
O'Brien knew of three dreadnoughts which looked like that, but only one man with such a welcome, if slightly irritating, knack for gloriously cinematic entrances.   
"Chief," roared Hotaru, his Asian complexion streaked with blood, "The Enterprise has extended her shields around us."  
  
Sisko was taking the news of his ship's salvation quite well. Of course he appreciated the fact that he was looking at the impressive flagship with rage instead of the unholy fury of the Defiant's warp core breaching.   
Like the Chief, Sisko had never before seen the ship in person, but unlike O'Brien, it had been by design, not fate. The man was once Locutus of Borg, the monster that had decimated most of the former Star Fleet and destroyed Sisko's life. For now though, he had a different payback to achieve.  
It wasn't too difficult to find a way in to the station, as every sort of merchant and transport ship imaginable (well imaginable to the kind of black or flea market business that thrived on Babylon Five) began to stream out of a nearby aperture since the arrival of the Enterprise. Dax dodged and weaved between the speeding vessels as they recklessly made good their exodus.  
"Rush hour," snapped Dax, wishing that shuttles were fitted with car horns, not that they would be much use in the vacuum of space.  
The shuttlepod shot through the opening at a speed slightly above that of Star Fleet regulation's worst nightmare, and now that Dax had artificial gravity to contend with, the pod had to twirl on its axis so it was right-way-up in relation to the landing bay's floor. As the shuttlepod swooped down to land it was sideswiped violently by a fleeing rocketship, sending the shuttlepod skidding across the deck.  
When it stopped moving, the pod's two gullwing doors opened and Sisko and Dax emerged from them. Then Sisko put his seat foreward to let out Worf and Garek. The four of them did not look that out of place amid the pandimonium but their pod's arrival had still been spotted by a group of eight secuirity guards. Sisko dove back into the shuttlepod and ran his fingers across the controls. A golden wave of energy rippled from the pod's phasers, dropping the guards unconcious to the floor. He got out and closed the door.  
"Draw your phasers," he ordered, "Highest stun."  
Dax was looking at one of the fallen guards.  
"I had a uniform like that about eighty years ago." she took a look at the label underneath the uniforms collar. "These are old Star Fleet jackets. Dyed blue so we wouldn't notice."  
It wasn't until they reached one of Babylon Five's main corridors when Sisko realised he had a problem. Everywhere he looked, all he could see was endless rivers of humanoids flowing in panic through huge cavernous tunnels.  
However they did it, this station was indeed five miles long and half a mile in circumference, at least twelve times bigger mass-wise then Deep Space Nine. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of crewmen on the station against the eighty-four that had been crammed into the Excalibur's nine shuttles. He had instructed them to only take over key areas of the station but since his pod had entered the station in a conventional way, he had no idea how to get to Sheridan.  
"Captain," said Garek. He obviosly preferred the dark browns and gothic angles of Cardassian architecture to the garish whites and pale greys of this orbiting getto. "My tricorder's schematics of this place locates the control centre three miles away."  
"Fighting through all those fools would be enjoyable," said Worf, "but hazardous." Then Worf dispelled such silly thoughts, "No matter, today is a good day to die."  
"Come back here Commander." called Sisko after him. "They must have something like a monorail or turbolift to get around."  
Explosions and the high pitched whine of hand phasers could be heard behind them.  
Garek waved his tricorder in that direction and his smile broadened.  
"Two Federation runabouts have just arrived in the landing bay."  
"They must be from Enterprise." said Dax, "And if we're lucky they're carrying about twenty marines each."  
Sisko's comm badge beeped and he rose a hand to answer it.  
"Captain Sisko," said Jean Luc Picard's distict voice, "We have distroyed the turret and have begun to ferry over more personel from Enterprise, Excalibur and the two light cruisers."  
"What are you doing here?" said Sisko with a hint of malace.  
"These people have wronged us too Captain. My crew will assist you in every way they can. Picard out."  
As Dax presumed correctly, about forty Star Fleet personel bearing amber markings pushed their way up the wide corridor towards them. They were all armed with phaser rifles and other offensive gadjets. Five of them wore pips on their colars, indicating officer ranks. The highest ranking, a lieutenant, approached Sisko's group and confirmed their captain's offer.   
Worf drove his arm into the crowd and threw the metal clad alien he had grabbed to the floor.   
"Take us to the control centre." he said with the kind of voice that would moisten Genghis Khan's trousers.  
Garek waved him to one side and knelt down beside the unfortunate.   
"In about forty minutes, my friend, this station will be swept away by the terrible force of phased energy rectification. And this very deck that your body armour will be welded to, will break up and be sent boiling off into space. However, as any temporal mechanics professor would tell you." he smiled a convincing version of a friendly smile, "The future is not set."  
  
  
  
Sheridan didn't get much comfort when the security doors slid down, cutting the control room off from the rest of the station. The televisions (yes, actual twentieth century television sets) that wallpapered the circular room, showed vicious firefights between the black and grey uniformed Star Fleet boarding parties, and his own blue clad troops. The golden bolts of the handphasers were dominant on the monitors, as his laser wielding crew were being driven back.   
On the viewscreen, five dark silver starships were lurking around the station like vultures, waiting for the moment when they would carve it apart with those damn phasers. He knew the largest one well, after all it was, despite his people's best efforts, the latest in a proud lineage of the most famous ship of all time.   
He also knew the other heavy cruiser, which his exploding fighters had significantly damaged, the Excalibur's crew also had reasons to want revenge. His people had built their own version of it. Now their great white starship hid behind a nearby moon, in fear of its more powerful counterpart.   
He didn't recognise two of the three smaller vessels, but the third one, now badly battered, was the inspiration for his own ship, the White Star. He would never admit that though.  
"Of course," he said in the same way that bad B-movie actors realise these things at the last minute, "I'll create a diversion and escape on the White Star."  
  
Sisko flattened himself against a bulky pillar and flinched as he was showered in multicoloured sparks. Opposite him in the corridor, Garek and Dax were doing the same, the laser bolts streaking all around them. Judging by the occasional cacophony of death screams up ahead, Worf must be still active and publicising this fact to the fullest extent. Lined up behind Sisko were six crewmen and their worried looking ensign.  
"Sir, our cover is liquefying." He pointed to the rapidly melting stanchion they were hiding behind.  
"Trust these guys to, economise, on the building materials." grunted Sisko. He ducked out for a second and squeezed off a few random shots. "Commander," he shouted across to Dax, "Solutions?"  
"Possibly," Her handphaser's power meter had coloured most of the settings bars in a pale yellow, "I need a fresh phaser."  
The ensign threw his rifle across to her and instantly whipped out his handphaser to replace it.  
"Thanks. Could I borrow the tricorder Garek?"  
"With my blessings."  
The indispensable little device displayed a wireframe image of the corridor. Any lifeforms were silhouetted in red, and anyone wearing a Star Fleet comm-badge had a green outline. It showed one such figure, about ten metres up the corridor, rolling between debris and firing off phaser shots, Worf. However, the corridor had nothing constructive to offer to the current problem. Instead she zoomed out the image to show the area around the corridor. The large cargo compartment to their right was in a vacuum, an acceptable if dated method of food preservation.   
"Commander." urged Sisko, whose tense expression could be made out through the volley of laser blasts.  
Dax reconfigured the rifle to level 16, a setting that pisses all over the likes of 'stun', 'kill', or even 'vaporise'. Tricorder in one hand and phaser rifle in the other she lined up her shot, but the pillar was unfortunately an obstruction. She tapped her comm-badge.  
"Worf, hang on to something. That goes for everybody."  
Taking a second just to make sure that everyone was ducking down, she poked the barrel of the rifle around the side of the stanchion and pulled the trigger. The golden stream lanced up the corridor and connected with the far wall in a blaze of explosive energy. The Babylon troops were thrown violently against the walls before being sucked back and out through the Volkswagen sized hole in the bulkhead; a splendid example of sudden depressurisation. As considered in Dax's plan, a hurricane of wind rushed down the corridor, taking dust and loose items with it. The extreme combination of howling suction and difficult breathing was horrifying. With tremendous effort, Dax succeeded in glancing at the tricorder and seeing Worf's representation clinging for dear life onto a girder. After a long two minutes, the station's environmental systems succeeded in equalising the corridor and the fierce suction ceased.  
Sisko crawled out from under the pile of six crewmen and their ensign, and scowled.   
"Commander..."  
"I know Benjamin, towel drying is the method recommended by most leading stylists"  
"Your jokes should be a court martial offence."  
Worf rejoined them and the group set off again, pausing only to point and laugh at the Babylon troops now floating helplessly and confused in the zero-G cargo bay. In less then a minute Sisko and friends reached a turbolift.  
  
Watching and waiting, the five starships continued to hover around the station as their boarding parties spread throughout it. On other monitors, the civilian population continued to evacuate. It was now or never. Sheridan hit the record button on his console. He decided that he'd leave a message for Star Fleet which will be played when he was thousands of miles away and safe.  
"Federation bastards, this is Captain John Sheridan. Although you have overrun this station and dispersed our followers, your victory is short lived. The destruct codes have been activated by the time you will hear this and I have..."  
"All the charisma of a wet sock." said Sisko.  
Sheridan swung round and saw his nemesis and ten others standing in the somehow opened doorway. In a related occurrence, ten phasers were aimed at him and his staff.  
"Here's the deal Sheridan," continued Sisko. "Star Fleet protocol prohibits me from taking the sort of revenge that keeps my friend Worf here smiling. So instead you are to stand trial back at Earth."  
Sheridan made a move for his holster so Sisko shot him.   
"Resisting arrest is not healthy under Star Fleet protocol." said Sisko.  
The phaser had only been set to level one, the opposite end of the power range which didn't knock out Sheridan but did weaken him.  
"You'll never get away with this." shouted one of Sheridan's lackeys. Clichés were more abundant in this place then liposuction scars.  
Sisko fired another bolt of golden burning pain at Sheridan, who was still shaking on the floor. "Everyone can take on their own rip- off." suggested Sisko as he fired four sizzling beams at Sheridan's head. Then he kicked him in the ribs. "It's very therapeutic."  
"I'm not sure that's within Federation policy." mused Dax, "Not even World Wrestling Federation..."  
The control centre erupted into a energy weapon crossfire. The Enterprise soldiers providing cover fire for the vengeful DS9ers. It didn't take Dax long to find her counterpart.   
"I am Susan Ivanova. Commander. I am the right hand of vengeance and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am Death incarnate. I am the last living thing you are ever going to see. God sent me."  
"Oh hello." It was so annoying when stupid people tried to turn something as sacred as vengeance back on the wronged. It was even worse when that was the kind of tack they used for fighting banter. Dax dropped the rifle and leapt forward.  
Worf was disappointed to find that his opponent was a fat Italian who fell to the ground after a single punch. Fortunately, He was kept occupied by pallid copies of Riker, Quark, and Major Kira.  
At first, Garek couldn't find the rip off of himself; he was relieved if a little left out. But as he shot the 'Doctor Bashir' rip off, ( a cheap idiot also filling the role of a token black guy ) he felt he deserved to be plagiarized as much as anyone else. Before he got angry though, he noticed that he was not the only person in the control center in civilian clothing. Sulking in a corner was a weedy human with a hippie style hairdo.   
"This is a poor insult." said Garek, he strode over to the guy, produced a paper clip, two fig rolls, and a rubber band, "It seems the two of us will have a conversation." His victim exhaled a barely audible scream.  
Any guilt that Sisko was having with repetitively dropping Sheridan's face onto his boot was dismissed when he recalled one of the many times that Babylon Five supporters proclaimed themselves vastly superior. They were assholes. Sheridan was an asshole. If you looked up 'asshole' in the dictionary, you would find he had already underlined it along with all the other 'naughty' words. He felt it was a shame that his unworthy opponent had lost consciousness five minutes ago.  
"Commander Dax. Shut down the transporter scramblers and the auto destruct sequence. I want to blast this place out of the sky myself."  
Dax let 'Death Incarnate' slump to the floor and went over to the main computer terminal.  
Sisko looked at the security monitors and grinned when he saw long lines of disarmed Babylon troops being led away by Star Fleet soldiers.  
"Pattern scramblers disabled." said Dax.  
Sisko hit his comm-badge.  
"Sisko to all ships, Babylon Five is secure."  
O'Brien's face appeared on one of the screens. He looked as scarred and burnt as the Defiant itself did. The picture was bathed in a soft blue light and the steady thrum of the warp reactor core could be heard in the background.  
"The ship is in pieces sir, it was a low trick they pulled there. I had to reroute all bridge controls to engineering. Sir, Captain Picard has asked if you would like to fire the first shot from the Enterprise."  
"I accept. Tell the other starships to start transporting prisoners aboard." he faced his comrades. "Dax, you and Worf will retrieve the shuttlepod. I want every person, shuttle and runabout off this station in less then an hour."  
Sisko took one last look around.   
"Mister Garek, let's get out of here." he turned to the ensign and pointed at the Babylon officers strewn around the room. "Get those idiots to the starships."  
The Cardassian stood beside him. Sisko hoisted up Sheridan by the hair.  
"Sisko to Enterprise, Three to beam up."  
Three columns of sparkling light enshrouded them and a second later they were gone.  
  
"The last six shuttlecrafts are detaching themselves from the station. Estimating three minutes to total evacuation."  
"Understood Mister Data," said Picard. He activated the intercom. "All hands. I recommend the forward facing windows for the best view of what promises to be a spectacular firework display."  
The turbolift doors at the rear of the bridge hissed open to reveal Sisko and Garek. The Enterprise's interior was predominately warm browns and dark greys, darkly while stylishly lit.  
"Ah, Captain Sisko, if you could do the honours?"  
Sisko said nothing. Instead he pulled a unconscious figure from the back of the lift. When Picard saw who it was, he allowed himself a bitter smile. Sisko dragged the pathetic fool to the front of the bridge and threw him in front of the viewscreen.  
"I want him conscious." said Sisko. "Get a medic up here."  
Sisko walked past Picard showing only a passive hatred. But Jean Luc Picard was a diplomat.  
"Capatin Sisko," he started, "We have prepared a little something that should make this a more then memorable experience."  
Sisko stared at him with impatience. Picard ignored this.  
"Mister Data and I have created a computer program, or even a programme, that choreographs the weapons systems with a resounding performance of Hector Berlioz's Vallon Sondre from his opera The Trojans."  
Sisko didn't share Picard's great love and knowledge of classical music, but seemed to get the general idea.  
"If you would like to 'conduct' it from the weapons console." insisted Picard, "You will be accompanied by the talent of Commander Worf on the Defiant, and Captain Calhoun on the Excalibur."  
"It does sound promising," admitted Sisko.  
"The runabout Garonne has returned," reported Data, "There are no detectable lifesigns left on Babylon Five.  
Sisko examined the weapons console. In addition to the usual options were several special subroutines.   
A medical officer emerged from the turbolift, strode to the forward of the bridge, fitted a vial of something onto the hypospray and held it to Sheridan's neck. With a moan the failed captain regained consciousness. The viewscreen that filled his vision displayed the terribly vulnerable station. He soon discovered he was paralysed from the neck down.  
"It's only temporary," consoled the doctor, "Shitbag."  
Picard sat in his famous chair.  
"Gentlemen. Are we ready?"  
"Yeager ready."  
"Excalibur, give the word."  
"Asgard ready."  
"Defiant standing by." shouted Worf's voice. To look at Worf, you would not imagine him to be a musically minded person. Attaching any state of mind to Worf is difficult enough without receiving an angry scowl or a broken leg. But in actuality, Klingons love to sing. They consider it to be the finest fruit of victory. To any discernible warrior, belting out an eight-hundred verse ballad about the filleting of their enemies is far more rewarding then the plundered wealth or technology. And since Vallon Sondre was an operatic piece, and Worf loved both Klingon and Terran opera, he was ideal to operate the Defiant's weaponry.  
Picard rose from his chair and stood rigid before the image of Babylon Five. The shadows and the pulsing red lighting highlighted his expression.  
"They invade our space, and we fall back. They plagurise entire concepts, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here. Thus far, no further. And we shall make them pay for what they've done."  
  
There was a silence throughout the five starships for a moment, before the opening bars of the somber cantata began to reverberate through every square inch of starship surrounding Babylon Five. The enormous station hung there. Glistening, white, a sacrifice. A golden stream of energy shot out from each ship and sweeped around the cylindrical monolith clockwise, missing the sides by metres, before closing in, with petal-like grace towards it. The powerful beams tore and burnt through the metal with ease, colouring the black empty void with fire and crystalline vents of oxygen. As every succeeding instrument joined the orchestration, a new stream of light would erupt from the starships, the Enterprise for brasswind, the Excalibur for woodwind, the Defiant's phaser pulses were timed with the percussion, the Asgard and Yeager as first and second violins respectively.  
Then there was silence and the station was left to display its wounds for a semibreve. A wide angle wave of white light screamed forth from the Enterprise as the soprano vocalist began to lament the fall of Troy. When the glare subsided, electricity was inconsistently darting along the station's sides. The Defiant then spat forward five flaming blue torpedoes simultaneously, which were soon framed, again flower like, by six fiery red torpedoes from the Excalibur. The deadly daisy chain expanded with the rise in pitch and contracted as the bass began to moan ominously. Now as one sparkling salvo, the torpedoes slammed into the station's side, blasting out debris and flame, finally revealing a smouldering ravine.  
Several more varied displays pounded the station as a fanfare to every nuance of the music. True fireworks, in the form of a spectacular anti-matter spread, danced across the Enterprise's dark hull, and at her side, the Asgard's warp nacelles glowed the spectrum of the rainbow. As every beat was being accented by a sweep of phaser fire, tearing great chunks of the station apart, it was beginning to look less like a five mile metal tube and more like a giant burnt branch. The crescendo built up, the rate of attack increased, and every previous display was repeated. Then the five starships spiralled around each other and began to blanket the dying hulk in golden/white showers of energy.  
  
Sisko's best indication of the explosion was the bridge shuddering violently and the yellow afterimage that blinded him for a few seconds. When he managed to force his eyelids open, all he could see was the quickly darkening shrapnel being sent hurtling into the breathless void. That and the wonderful recollection of Sheridan's haunched form silhouetted against the blaze of light that knelled the death of that vile structure.  
An awed silence held the five starships in its icy grasp. Finally Sisko spoke. His voice was grateful and sincere.  
"Fecking brilliant."   
"We have made vengeance a romantic artform." said Picard slowly, "Revenge has been proven countless times as a cold and empty exercise, that brings little satisfaction or comfort." he eyed Sisko, "They just didn't do it with style."  
Sheridan managed to get to his feet.  
"Sheridan," Picard sternly said, "Your station has been destroyed, your crew arrested, and your followers disbanded. I have been ordered to..."  
"Captains," interrupted Data, "On the far side of that moon, a large starship is creating a hyperspacial tunnel in an attempt to escape. Its signature beacon designates it as the Excalibur."   
The events of that past ten minutes make a hollow joke of the fact that the Sovereign Class starship U.S.S. Enterprise is officially classified as a 'scientific research and exploration vessel', but alongside the ridiculous amount of weaponry, the ship is in fact bristling with all sorts of cutting-edge scientific equipment and exotic sensors.  
"Enterprise to Excalibur. Do you see that ship?"  
"Not yet, Jean Luc." responded Calhoun of the one true Excalibur, "We've been searching for it six months now. They must not escape."  
"Data. You have my full consent to carry out whatever solution you doubtlessly have in mind."  
At that second, Data had quite a lot of solutions in mind, to many different problems, but presumed that he had been ordered to perform the task that would only occupy six percent of his processing resources.  
"Aye Captain, initiating heavy graviton beam."  
The Enterprise's powerful deflector dish flared fiercely and twelve thousand kilometres away, the artificial wormhole disappeared. The Babylonian starship Excalibur was now stranded with the very pissed off Federation starship Excalibur. Whatever crusade they were planning, was now over.  
Picard turned to Sheridan once more.   
"I am both pleased and deeply disgusted with myself for finding so much pleasure in telling you your punishment, but my enlightened moral being will probably recover." Picard assumed his best command voice. "Sheridan, you are to be sent back to Earth in disgrace, and in the shuttlecraft we use for quarantining flatulent Boliens. On arrival you shall be publicly beaten by the surviving members of the Artane Boys Band, forced to do a cover version of Yesterday, and then..."  
"You don't know?" sobbed Sheridan.  
"That is true." acknowledged Picard with disappointment, "I'm afraid I just can't think of a punishment suitable enough." Then, in an instant of irresponsibility, he found himself calling a name that his subconscious associated with pounding migraines and a number of unrequested bouquets.  
"Q."  
With a flash of light everyone's favourite omnipotent prankster appeared on the bridge, slid off his sunglasses and handed a tequila to Data.  
"Mon capitaine," said Q through a puckish grin, the only sort of grin he has ever been seen with. It has been speculated that he actually was Puck, however Q's usual response to this theory is to zap everyone present to Aristotle's stag party. "Why have you requested the help of the most brilliant and endearing being in the universe? I thought you wanted nothing to do with me. Something about my alterior motives, my scheming, my flawless posture." he grinned at the other captain. "Oh hi Benny!"   
Sisko just nodded.  
"Q," said Picard, "The only reason I have summoned you is because I'm in a very good mood and I was..."  
Q 'muted' his words for the rest of that sentence.  
"I know, I know. You want to punish this miserable creature." Q regarded Sheridan with disgust. "As I am the individual, derivative primitives like you make me sick. At least Jean Luc makes an effort."  
"So you will decide a punishment?" said Sisko.  
"And If you could please hurry up," smiled Picard. It had never occurred to him to simply ask for Q to pay a visit, so Q wouldn't have a premade plot.   
"Why don't you just get him to locate your hair, Jean Luc?" snapped Q, "You must have scattered it all over the galaxy in the last few decades."  
"Really Q," the captain was enjoying this, after years of aggravation he was finally being the tormentor in the relationship.  
"Okay then," said Q, reddening with rage. To compliment this mood, several nearby planets exploded and the fishtank in Picard's quarters began to boil. "I won't punish him. In fact, I'll reward him. The greatest reward ever given to a mere mortal."   
With a flash of white light Sheridan vanished.  
"Oh good call Picard." sneered Sisko, the full anger of his prey escaping so easily was only just beginning to upset him.  
"Ha. You thought you could control me Jean Luc," laughed Q.   
"Are you totally self-orientated Q?" Picard was also slipping back into his old role of the angry audience to The Q Show.  
"I was going to heap that precious honour upon you Jean Luc," said Q, the balance of power between him and Picard now restored, "But due to your ignorance, I've given it to Sheridan."  
"What have you given him?" said Sisko impatiently.  
"I," announced Q, "Have commissioned him to write my biography. A thoroughly Splendid Deity: Six Billion Years of Q Escapades. It may take a few centuries of hard work, but it beats the hell out of boldly going to seek out less interesting lifeforms and then beating them up. Farewell Captains Mundane."  
And Q disappeared in a flash of white light.  
"That worked out well." said Sisko, fully satisfied.  
"It is lucky for the purposes of our vengeance," agreed Picard, "That the most superhuman feature of Q is his ego."  
Sisko began to move towards the turbolift.  
"I am the commodore of this flotilla, I must return to the Defiant to oversee repairs to both it and the Excalibur."  
"I'll have the transporter room standing by. Actually, the Enterprise has got previous engagements. We are also heading back to Earth, although to the dawn of the third millennium."  
"Really?" Sisko didn't really care.  
"There was this one rich spoilt moaner who never got what he truly deserved." he looked at Sisko's Cardassian companion. "Come to think of it...would you mind if I could borrow Mister Garek and Commander Worf. They possess certain skills which may help alter this winger's perspective on life, and misery. Since it is time travel you'll only miss them for a few minutes."  
"Very well." said Sisko, if only to know how well the Cardassian and surly Klingon would manage in a time of hype and falsehood.  
  
Once Sisko had returned to the Defiant he headed straight for engineering, which had been converted into a backup bridge.   
"The Enterprise is leaving sir," said Hotaru.   
Sisko noted the wires and scorched debris covering the deck.  
"Estimated time to repair?"  
"Six days, give or take the odd fatality," said O'Brien.  
"The Enterprise has returned. Sir?" said a confused Hotaru.  
As it happens, Captain Picard's mission was a success, with the only change to history being to the Guinness Book of Records. The record for Most Stitches Required For An Open Wound was now held by one Dawson Leary.  
In the emptiness surrounding the Defiant, several scavenging vessels were combing the area in case anything valuable survived. Joke's on them, thought Sisko. Even before its multi-megaton redecoration, Babylon Five was worth about as much as Doctor Bashir's opinion.  
Though it was destroyed and its crew suffering all sorts of wonderfully imaginative punishments, there still existed forces that threatened the Federation that Sisko had sworn to defend. The Defiant could not afford to spend long away from the front lines.  
  
  
  
Extract from The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy (revised edition).  
  
Babylon Five:  
Let's not waste time explaining what it was and just say that the universe is a much better plain of existence in its absence. It was a place where the only concept you could associate 'original' with, was 'sin'. It was the physical manifestation of trite. In fact the only positive thing you can say about it, is that it was.   
  
  
  
  



End file.
